


When the Night is Long

by Miniatures



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexual Richie Tozier, Childhood Memories, Gay Eddie Kaspbrak, Hotels, M/M, Recovered Memories, Sloppy Makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 16:36:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20854898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miniatures/pseuds/Miniatures
Summary: Mike can't get ahold of Richie. Thankfully, his next show is in New York, and Eddie's there to drag him back to Derry... if he can bring himself to face him at all.





	When the Night is Long

_ In retrospect_, Eddie thinks, as he nurses the world’s most mediocre and yet overpriced seltzer, _maybe this was a dumb idea_. 

The seltzer is for his stomach, which is doing loops and its very best to claw its meaty way out through his throat. His palms, wrapped tight around the once-icy glass, are slick with condensation and sweat. He catches a glimpse of himself in the bar mirror, and a doe-eyed, waxy, bushbaby stares back at him. _No way in hell this works_. 

He’s been in this hotel lobby for what feels like far too long. The bar is a centerpiece of glass and gold, stuck like a fountain in the middle of a sunken conversation pit lined with long tables. From where Eddie sits, he has his eye on the front entrance, his peripheral gaze on the elevators. He feels like an assassin, waiting for his target. In a way, he is—once Richie Tozier walks through the door, Eddie’s going to end his life, or what he thinks his life is now, one way or another. 

Eddie still hasn’t totally processed everything. Mike’s call. The memories... they’re faded and piecemeal, a patchwork of names and moments with no connective tissue, run through with a persistent vein of _come back, come home, you’re not finished with this yet_. 

What “this” was, Eddie still isn’t wholly sure. He remembers Big Bill, and his dead brother. _I was at that funeral_, he thinks, and he can picture a small, polished coffin lowering into the ground. He remembers the summer after Bill’s brother—Georgie, it was Georgie—died, and how their tight-knit group of four had grown. He remembers his friends—maybe not all of their faces, or all they did together, but the way they made him feel that summer. Strong. Brave. You needed to be brave in Derry. All those eyes on you, burning over twisted mouths. Eddie knows they had to be even braver that summer. 

When Eddie had gone home that day, still shaking from his car accident, he’d gone to his and Myra’s pharmacy of a medicine cabinet and remembered throwing pills in his mother’s pale face. 

And then another call, just an hour later. Mike’s voice, irritated and resigned. 

“I can’t get ahold of Richie—Tozier, you remember, don’t you?” 

Eddie hadn’t. But then he rolled the name over his tongue and suddenly he did. That face had come back with a clarity that ripped his guts apart. A goofy grin and floppy dark hair, thick glasses, and a mouth that never stopped running. Pink and black, all pink and black, and Eddie remembered, in that moment, the heart-flipping terror and exquisite pain that had come along with his friendship with Richie Tozier. Late nights spent staring at the ceiling, agonizing over the way Richie had sat too close, laughed too long, smiled too gently. Washes of embarrassment and guilt. Forcing himself into hammocks built for one, finding excuses to touch his friend’s warm skin. 

“The asshole got famous. He’s Trashmouth Tozier—I'm sure you’ve heard of him, haven’t you? Anyway, I can’t find his personal number anywhere, no matter how far down I dig, and his agent won’t let me talk to him. I think she thinks I’m insane. Whatever.” 

“You are a little insane, Mike,” Eddie had said, quietly. 

Mike laughed. “Sure. But listen, Richie’s doing a show in Manhattan tomorrow night. We_ all _need to be together on this one, Eddie. It can’t just be whoever I manage to get on the horn.” 

“So, you want me to talk to him?” Eddie snorted. “You think I’ll have a better fuckin’ chance of getting my hands on him?” _Poor choice of words, Eds_. 

“Better than me! At least you’re in the same city. Look, I can’t get in touch with him, but I do know where he’s staying...” 

Eddie had gone to the hotel. Worse, he had gone to the show. He had indeed heard of Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier before—his specials were always on. He’d even watched a few. Had found them comforting, though he’d never known why, and laughed wholeheartedly at them. Myra had laughed too, but in that bemused, polite way that she did when she didn’t really find something funny, she just wanted Eddie to think they had the same sense of humour. She would look at him, smiling nervously, as if to say, _ see, I like this too, we’re perfect for each other!_ It broke his heart more than it annoyed him, though it did both very well. 

And then she would turn the special off halfway, saying she was tired and needed to go to bed, and Eddie would finish it alone, muffling his laughter with a throw pillow. 

At the live show that night, there was no pillow. Richie walked out on stage, and even though Eddie had seen him on TV countless times before, now there was recognition. He saw that young boy, pink and black and beaming, in the gangly man with the microphone. In his mussed dark hair, his crooked smile, his crinkling eyes. Eddie ached. He burned. He laughed until he cried the way he had wanted to cry the moment the comedian first appeared. That was Richie, his Richie, and he _remembered him_. 

Eddie drowns his anxiety in a waterfall of seltzer. He remembers Richie, and now he’s going to drag him back to hell. 

It’s maybe an hour before Richie walks into the lobby. But he saunters in at last, on legs that are at least two miles too long, wearing glasses that are at least two feet too thick. Eddie steels himself to approach one of his oldest friends—and then Richie makes a beeline for the bar and saves him the trouble. 

He sits two stools down from Eddie and orders a White Russian. Propped up on his elbows, he looks lazily around the lobby until his gaze finally settles on Eddie. 

Eddie smiles at him. When Richie smiles back, the floor disappears—falls right out from under Eddie’s feet, and he feels his stomach go with it. The temperature rises by a degree, and Eddie feels the sudden, inexplicable urge to move closer. 

Funny, that. 

Richie’s expression turns curious. “Hey, do I know you?” 

Panic rises. Eddie sips his seltzer—third of the night—and stares, unblinking, at the bar top. He’s fairly certain he looks nuts. “Hmm?” 

“Yeah, have we met? I swear I know you from somewhere, man, what’s your name?” 

Eddie looks at him. Up close, he can see the crow’s feet and laugh lines that have settled into Richie’s face. He can see his long fingers, the shape of his nose, the shape of his _jaw _—someone must’ve fucked with the thermostat, because it’s far too hot in the lobby now. He watches as Richie’s brow furrows. 

“Um, yeah, we have met.” Eddie stops to swallow the lump in his throat. _Why is this so hard_? “I’m Eddie. Eddie Kaspbrak.” 

Richie goes still. His eyes widen, and he blinks a few times rapidly before resuming a wild stare. Recognition dawns out of horror, and Richie’s face animates, twists, softens. 

“Eds?” 

“Don’t call me Eds,” Eddie says, the words drawn from him as if by magic, or reflex. 

Richie grins, and laughs—a little high, a little manic. “Fuck, _Eddie_! Holy shit. Holy shit, it is you!” He stands, as if to get closer, but he wobbles back on his heels a bit instead. “Fuck. Oh, fuck, why are you here, Eddie?” 

“I, uh, live here. I went to see your show.” 

“No.” Richie puts a hand out to steady himself. It winds up on Eddie’s knee by sheer coincidence. “Eddie. Why are you here.” 

Eddie sighs. He fixes his gaze on Richie’s hand and relays Mike’s message. 

After he’s done, Richie takes a long moment’s pause. He withdraws his hand, nods repeatedly, as if he’s gearing himself up to say something important. 

“Right,” he mutters. “That’s right, the pact. The... blood. Okay, that’s okay. C’mon.” 

And then he promptly vomits on the floor. 

***

Eddie relays the events of the previous night over in his head, but he still can’t quite believe how he wound up here. Sitting in Richie Tozier’s hotel room, his back aching from spending the night in a chintz armchair, while the man himself sleeps like a goddamn baby in a California king. 

He’d helped Richie stagger up to his room, where he’d continued puking into the toilet. Eddie, without thinking, had taken his glasses off and held his hair out of his face while he heaved. Richie’s face was hot, and while the intimacy was belied by the vomiting, Eddie couldn’t help the thumping of his traitorous heart. 

“I think... I’m done.” Richie sat up against the shower and gave Eddie a weak smile. “Goddamn. Never thought I’d see you again.” 

“You didn’t even remember I existed until twenty minutes ago,” Eddie pointed out. 

“I’m trying to be _nice_, you shit.” 

Eddie snorted. “I saw your show, by the way,” he said. 

Richie nodded. “Did hubby like it?” He gestured at Eddie’s wedding ring. 

“Fuck you.” 

“No, I’m asking!” 

“My _wife _,” he held the world longer than he should’ve. It no longer sounded right to his ear. “Didn’t come. I... might’ve told her I left already.” Eddie twisted the ring around his finger until it hurt. “She thinks I’m on my way to Derry.” 

“Huh.” Richie took a deep breath, let it out slow through his teeth. “Did _you _like it?” 

Eddie glared at him. “Yeah. Yeah, I liked your fucking stand-up, Richie, didn’t you hear what I said? It’s back. We have to... go back.” 

He put his face in his hands. “I barely remember what It _is_, what does that even fucking mean?” 

“I’m getting pieces.” Eddie is suddenly hyper aware that their legs are touching. “That whole fucking summer is a blur, but I remember balloons, and a clown, and a—I think a homeless guy? Or... he lived in the Neibolt house, and he had a bunch of... sores, I don’t know.” _I remember you pulling me out of danger, making me look at you instead of the monsters_. 

Richie had looked at him, then, like he was remembering the same thing. 

They decided to talk about it in the morning. Richie had gargled some mouthwash and crawled, sweaty and half-naked, into bed, and Eddie had resolved to curl up in the armchair. He didn’t want to impose. And Richie still looked vaguely grey—someone had to keep an eye on him. 

Awake, Eddie twists his wedding ring again. _Did hubby like it_? He scowls and tries to tell himself that the assumption has no basis in reality. He thinks of Myra, forcing herself to laugh at Richie’s show. Everything about her felt forced—the way she spoke to him, kissed him, made love to him. It didn’t happen often, and that wasn’t just because of him. Nothing between them happened often, or naturally, or— 

Richie rolls over and moans. He stretches, and his shirt hikes up to expose his stomach, the jut of his hips, the line of hair trailing down his belly and under his waistband. 

Something in Eddie stirs. _That_ wasn’t forced, not at all. 

He realizes, after a moment spent staring at exposed Richie and remembering why he had hated himself so much as a kid, that Richie is awake too. Awake, and looking at him. 

Eddie is on fire—on fucking fire. He can’t tell whether it’s embarrassment or something else, something he hasn’t felt since he was young. Either way, he can’t move. Richie’s eyes are dark and heavy, locked on his. 

“I think,” Richie says, his voice rough with sleep, “I missed you.” 

Eddie softens. “You can’t have missed me, idiot.” 

Richie sits up, pushes his hair out of his eyes. “I fucking know that, Eds, but I did.” 

“I hate it when you call me Eds.” 

“No, you don’t.” Richie smiles—genuinely, crookedly, sweetly, and it’s the most beautiful thing Eddie’s seen in twenty-seven years. 

Eddie isn’t sure how he ends up in the bed. He thinks, as he presses his mouth against Richie’s, that this isn’t like him at all. Eddie Kaspbrak is not an impulsive man. He’s not the sort to make the first move. He’s the kind of man who agonizes over decisions, who waits for the decision to be made by someone else, who looks thrice before he crosses the street. Or perhaps—Richie pulls him closer, and Eddie thinks that perhaps he’s simply forgotten who he is. 

It isn’t at all like kissing Myra. Kissing Myra, kissing women—the very few women he’s kissed—has been fine, pleasant, dispassionately mechanical. Kissing Richie is... electric. It hollows him out, makes him crave more, closer, hotter, makes him cling to Richie like he’s drowning. His cock is hard, and he can’t remember the last time his cock got hard without an eternity of coaxing. He feels like he’s a teenager again. 

Richie rolls him so he’s on his back, stares down at him like he can’t believe what he’s seeing. 

“Fuck me,” he breathes. 

“I mean, obviously,” Eddie says. 

Richie does the unthinkably familiar and pinches Eddie’s cheek. “You’re the same adorable little fucker you always were, aren’t you?” 

Is he? Eddie’s never thought of himself as adorable. Wormy, unfinished, nowhere near cute. He tugs Richie down for another rough kiss. Maybe what he thinks of himself doesn’t matter so much right now. 

The kiss softens. Richie pulls away, puts a hand on Eddie’s wrist and angles his hand so he’s staring at the gold band of his wedding ring. 

“That, uh,” he laughs dimly, “that’s still on there pretty tight, huh?” 

“I don’t wanna...” Eddie exhales. “Yeah. It is.” 

Richie’s hard too, Eddie notes as he flops down on the mattress beside him. The sight makes him salivate—actually fucking salivate. His head is swimming with the weight of this. 

“I can’t fucking believe you got married,” Richie says. 

“Why the fuck not?” 

“I dunno.” He shrugs. “I didn't.” 

Eddie shudders. He doesn’t know if he wants to hear this, if he’ll ever be ready to hear it. “And why didn’t you?” 

Rustle. Eddie can feel Richie’s eyes on him. 

“D’you remember when we used to rent videos at Fred’s Tapes, and you used to sneak out to come watch ‘em at my place?” Richie chuckles. “Dumbest thing in the world, you risked the wrath of the Blob to do it, too.” 

“Would you—come the fuck on, man. She wasn’t _that _fat.” 

“She _was _that shitty.” 

Eddie snorts. He does remember their Fred’s Tapes nights. They’d pick a random night, whenever the other Losers were busy and neither of them had other commitments. They would bike to the dingy storefront after school, their allowances pooled and crumpled in Eddie’s fanny pack. If they could get there before four PM, they would catch Kevin before his shift ended—Kevin was nineteen and bored and didn’t care about renting them R-rated movies. 

Every time, Eddie went home to his mother, and after a hurried dinner, claimed to be tired and said he needed to go to bed. He snuck out to Richie's instead. 

There was always a moment, when Eddie was on his way over, where he thought he might be doing something wrong. Surely there _must’ve _be something wrong with spending the night curled up in his best friend’s bed, watching movies that would give his mother a heart attack, relishing in the closeness and heat of Richie’s body, wishing desperately that he could tear himself away. 

And it was certainly a risk. Sonia had broken the lock on his bedroom door the day he turned twelve. Her fury, if she knew he was gone, where he had gone, would blot out the stars. 

Then he would spy Richie’s white face watching him from his bedroom window. Eddie would see him light up. They would climb into their blanket nest, illuminated by the buzzing, fuzzy light of Richie’s tiny TV. Richie was warm and laughing, and they were both running commentary on whatever it was they were watching, and Eddie knew he could never, ever stop. 

“So, what, you’re single because we rented movies together sometimes?” Eddie deadpans. 

There’s something raw and terribly vulnerable in Richie’s eyes. Eddie doesn’t want to look at it, but he can’t look away. “Yeah,” Richie says, and he kisses him again. 

They stay there for some time, exploring each other’s mouths and jaws and throats, but never straying below that. Eddie teases Richie for being a romantic hypocrite, too good to fuck a married man but not so good he won’t stick his tongue down his throat. Richie shuts him up with a well-placed bite. 

After an hour, a day, a year, their forty-year-old bodies grow resentful of their teenage passions, and they fall away from each other, embarrassingly out of breath. 

“We should... fuck... we should probably start driving, or whatever. Maybe we can catch a flight.” Eddie drums his fingers against his stomach. “Mike sounded really... like this is urgent. We should get there as fast as we can.” 

Richie grunts. “You seriously wanna go?” 

“Uh, yeah, that was the whole reason I came over here.” _It’s the whole reason my life is imploding, the reason I’m—fuck, I’m going to leave her, aren’t I? Not for Richie, not _just _for Richie, but_... “We swore we’d go back.” 

Richie is quiet. Then, “I barely fucking remember them.” 

“So what?” 

“So, I don’t remember them, but I remember these.” He pokes the tip of Eddie’s nose. 

Eddie stares at him. “My nostrils?” 

“Your freckles. I remember I always liked your freckles. I used to stare at you all the time when they showed up in the summer, I called it Freckle Season, and I wished I could do this.” He leans in and starts pressing kisses to each freckle on Eddie’s nose and cheeks. 

Eddie squawks, then laughs. He squirms away, sees Richie beaming at him. His heart aches. “What’s your point, Trashmouth?” 

There’s terror in Richie’s expression, just for a moment before it’s swiftly replaced by saucy indifference. “Well, with a friend like you, who needs, uh, other friends? Friends who want you to fight killer clowns and probably fucking die in a fucking sewer?” He cups Eddie’s cheek in his hand. “You’re here. So are your freckles. I’m cool with just... keeping that.” 

For a moment, Eddie considers it. Would it be so bad, really? To run away from everything and everyone—fuck the world, fuck Myra, fuck Mike, fuck any obligation that threatened to separate him from Richie ever again. He realizes, out of the blue, like a lightning bolt to the head, that he’s been in love with this ridiculous man since he was thirteen years old. Twenty-seven years, a wife and a lifetime later, and nothing has changed. He wants to rip apart the force that kept him from remembering. He wants to turn back to the day he left Derry and drag Richie with him. 

But he sees the circle now, clear as a memory. 

He sees Beverly recounting her vision—the sight of them all, decades older and decades wiser, facing It again. He sees Bill and his shard of broken glass. They made him strong. They made him brave. Or maybe they made him realize that was who he always was. 

“I’m not,” he says, and watches Richie’s face fall. “Christ, Rich, I know it's asking a lot, I really do, but we have to go back.” He smiles despite himself. “We’re Losers.” 

Richie is still and silent for a long, long time. “I don’t want to,” he says. 

“Richie—” 

He holds up a finger. “Let me finish! I don’t want to, but...” he sighs, “but I will. Dammit. I forgot how much I fucking hate it when you’re right.” 

Eddie grins. “Better get used to it.” 

***

They pull in to the parking lot of the Jade of the Orient together around seven-fifteen PM. Packing was an ordeal, as was sneaking away from Richie’s agent, but somehow they’d managed to make it—and promptly sacked out in the hotel around two-thirty in the morning. They stayed awake as long as it took to tell Mike they’d arrived, and that was all they could manage. 

Waking up in Richie’s arms that morning was the single most disgusting, glorious moment of Eddie’s life. Richie was drooling on his shoulder. He was heavy, sweaty, and looked utterly gorgeous, with his slack mouth open and his hair mussed beyond belief. 

He had woken up when Eddie shifted, and wiped his wet mouth and nose against Eddie’s bare shoulder. 

“Oh, come the fuck _on_,” Eddie yelped, and tried to yank himself out of the bed. 

Richie only held him tighter. “I’m gross, babe, you gotta take me as I am.” 

“No.” 

“Too late, you made me come back to Derry. I can fart around you now.” 

In the car, Eddie takes Richie’s hand and squeezes it. They lock eyes, and Eddie tries to pour everything he has into that one look. _I’m here with you, I want to be with you, you _can _fart around me, you asshole, because I’m not gonna let you go this time. Not even if it kills me_. 

“You ready?” Eddie asks him. 

“Not even a little,” Richie says. 

And then they go inside. 

**Author's Note:**

> Also, they go in there and Stan is there, he's fine, and because they're together nobody dies! Power of love motherfuckers! I will in all likelihood never expand on this AU but that's definitely how it ends. So there. 
> 
> How DID Mike get Richie's personal number? I mean, obviously, he's a genius, but how?? 
> 
> Special thanks to [GreyMichaela ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreyMichaela/pseuds/GreyMichaela) & [kaboomslang ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaboomslang/pseuds/kaboomslang)for beta'ing! 
> 
> Title from the lyrics of Armistice by Patrick Wolf


End file.
